fan
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "fan", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "fan" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "fan" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
fan is aEnglishnoun. It means: A hand-held device consisting of concertinaed material, or slats of material, gathered together at one end, that may be opened out into the shape of a sector of a circle and waved back and forth in... Pronounced /fæn/. It ranks #1,270 in English word frequency. Often confused with fi and FL.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fan |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /fæn/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,270 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fan is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fæn/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,270 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for fan in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fi", "FL", "FM", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English fan, inherited from Old English fann (“a winnowing, fan”), derived from Latin vannus (“fan for winnowing grain”), derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂weh₁- (“to blow”). Cognates *Latin ventus (“wind”) *Dutch wan (“winnowing bas… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is fan, spelled F-A-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A hand-held device consisting of concertinaed material, or slats of material, gathered together at one end, that may be opened out into the shape of a sector of a circle and waved back and forth in order to move air towards oneself and cool oneself.
- 2An electrical or mechanical device for moving air, used for cooling people, machinery, etc.
- 3The action of fanning; agitation of the air.
- 4Anything resembling a hand-held fan in shape, e.g., a peacock’s tail.
- 5An instrument for winnowing grain, by moving which the grain is tossed and agitated, and the chaff is separated and blown away.
- 6A small vane or sail, used to keep the large sails of a smock mill always in the direction of the wind.
- 7A section of a tree having a finite number of branches
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English fan, inherited from Old English fann (“a winnowing, fan”), derived from Latin vannus (“fan for winnowing grain”), derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₂weh₁- (“to blow”). Cognates *Latin ventus (“wind”) *Dutch wan (“winnowing basket”) *German Wanne (“winnowing basket”) *Swedish vanna (“a fan for winnowing”) *Old English windwian (“to fan, winnow”). More at winnow.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #1,270 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: